


The Bonds of Love

by HiddenTreasures



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s02e13 Doomsday, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Reunions, Romance, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 00:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTreasures/pseuds/HiddenTreasures
Summary: The Doctor is surprised when his bond with Rose doesn’t break after the Void closes, but then he turns around and sees an impossible blonde standing in front of him.





	The Bonds of Love

_No, no, no!_  The Doctor’s mind screamed for Rose as he watched her disappear with Pete into a parallel world, where he would never ever see her again.

The blindingly bright portal in the wall closed, and with it went the winds that had pulled Rose from the safety of her lever. Panic clawed through the Doctor’s mind, a combination of his own and Rose’s, and he followed the feeling of her in his head to the wall at the end of the room.

She was getting fainter and fainter, and the Doctor pressed himself up against the wall, desperate to keep her in his head. But he knew better than to think their bond could survive across the Void. It faded and the Doctor sucked in a sharp breath, waiting for the burning ache that would come with the ripping of their bond.

But it never came. Instead, their bond went silent. As silent as his head had been after the War. There was no pain, there was just… nothing. He wasn’t sure if that wasn’t worse than feeling their bond tear. At least if there was pain, it would have been evidence that he had shared the most intimate connection that he could with Rose. The nothingness he felt made it seem like their bond had simply disappeared, as though it had never been there in the first place.

Fruitless though he knew it was, the Doctor pressed his forehead into the wall and closed his eyes as he focused himself inward on the place their bond was. He tried looking for Rose’s half, but it was impossible to look for something that wasn’t there.

Frantic now, the Doctor looked deeper and deeper, needing to find the remnants of their broken bond. It had to be there somewhere. It couldn’t have just vanished.

He kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the tears that were threatening. How could it all have gone so wrong so quickly? They’d only meant to stop by Jackie’s for tea. They were supposed to go home together, liked they did every day.

Now he was alone, with a haunting emptiness in his mind that felt so much worse than it did after the War.

His chest ached as he forced himself to suck in a breath. Rose couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t be. Their bond couldn’t be gone. It was supposed to be there forever. She was supposed to be there forever.

“Doctor, turn around.”

The Doctor froze. No… No, it couldn’t possibly… She was gone!

“It’s me. I’m here.”

A small hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched away from it, even as he opened his eyes and turned his head.

No… No, it couldn’t possibly…

“Rose!” he rasped, wiping away the tears in his eyes. “Oh, Rose!”

Her face crumpled, and she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face into his chest. Numbly, the Doctor wrapped his arms around her waist and held her tight. He was overwhelmed. He’d lost Rose. She was gone. Yet here she was.

“I missed you,” she whimpered into his shirt. “God, I missed you! I love you. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” he murmured into her ear, his mind still racing as he tried to process what was happening.

“Please,” she gasped through her tears. “Please fix our bond. Please fix it.”

The Doctor pulled back, ready to press his fingertips to her temples, but he stopped short when he finally got a chance to look at her properly. She wasn’t dressed in the soft blue cardigan and black trousers she was wearing a few minutes ago. No, she was dressed in a dark blue leather jacket and a pink undershirt.

But that wasn’t all that was different. Her hair was longer, and a more honey-blonde than bottle-blonde. Her face was leaner. Older.

His breath left his body. This wasn’t his Rose. Well, yes. All Roses were his Rose. But this wasn’t the Rose he had lost five minutes ago.

“Rose, I don’t understand,” he croaked. “What happened? Why are you here?  _How_  are you here?”

“I’ll explain it all,” she promised, reaching out to take his hand in hers. She brought his knuckles to her lips for a hard kiss. “I swear, I’ll explain everything. But please fix our bond first. I can’t stand it.”

The Doctor was harshly reminded back to the nothingness in his head, and he nodded.

“Neither can I,” he admitted.

He reached up and pressed his fingertips to her temples, and he closed his eyes as he initiated a telepathic link with her. That was all it took. From the first moment his mind touched hers, their bond flared sharply back to life, and the Doctor felt weak with relief that it was back.

But that relief was short-lived when he was bombarded with the utter agony crying out from Rose’s half of the bond. Her mind screamed with white-hot pain that the Doctor knew would have accompanied a broken bond. But their bond hadn’t broken. Had it?

Dread filled the Doctor as he slowly began putting the pieces together. Their bond hadn’t broken for him, because Rose had come back to his universe before it broke. His side of the bond had been suspended in stasis, unbroken but muted until Rose came back.

But it had broken for her. The anguish she was projecting made that obvious, and the Doctor’s head seared with the shared pain and heartache Rose had endured alone for far too long.

“Oh, love,” he gasped, wrapping her into his arms again. “Oh, Rose! My Rose, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She clung tightly to him as he blanketed their bond in the softest touch, trying to heal the raw, gaping wounds that were still present in Rose’s mind.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, feeling tears of sympathy and sorrow well up in his eyes.

“Let’s go home,” she whimpered into his shirt. “Please. I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed the TARDIS.”

The Doctor nodded, but before he let go of Rose, he cradled the back of her head in his hand and he leaned down to press his lips to hers. She moaned into the kiss, and she wrapped her arms tighter around his neck as she crushed their mouths closer, morphing the kiss from chaste and tender into something hot and desperate. Desire and need flared across their bond, and the Doctor’s knees went weak with the intensity of it.

But he was also aware that they were still in Torchwood, and that UNIT would likely be on their way.

“Let’s go home, love,” he whispered as he pulled away from her.

Rose’s chest heaved as she caught her breath, but she nodded and grasped his hand in hers as they walked to the lifts.

They were both quiet as they rode the lift down forty-five floors and to the TARDIS. The Doctor’s mind reeled as he tried to process his situation. Rose was home, never having left it, and yet she had. She’d spent time without him, with a broken bond, while he’d had to endure five minutes of a silenced bond. He hated the disparity. Why couldn’t he have had the pain of a broken bond, and Rose have been left with the pain-free nothingness in her head?

“Don’t,” Rose said sharply, squeezing his fingers. “Just don’t. I asked for this, Doctor. I asked to be taken home to this moment in hopes of sparing you from any pain.”

“How did you get home?” he asked as the lift dinged and the doors slid open.

But Rose ignored in in favor of jogging out of the lift and to the TARDIS that was waiting across the room. He watched her reach into her shirt and pull out her key to unlock the doors to their home.

He followed her inside, and together they sent the TARDIS into the Vortex. Rose’s mind was buzzing with nostalgia as she yanked the dematerialization lever, sending them into flight.

“Oh, I missed you,” Rose murmured to the TARDIS.

The ship dimmed her lights, and she let out a low, sorrowful hum as she mourned with Rose and all she had gone through.

“How long?” the Doctor asked quietly, needing to know but fearful of the answer. “How long has it been for you?”

“Almost four years,” she answered, a sad smile pinching her face.

The Doctor’s hearts fell low into his stomach. Four years. Rose had spent four years in daily pain.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, wishing he could take back those four years from Rose. He wished he would have tethered her safely to her clamp, so there never would have been a possibility of her falling. He wished he had taken that side of the room instead. He wished…

“Hey, it’s over now,” Rose murmured, stepping up to him to cradle his cheeks in her hand. “I’m home. I’m with you. We’re together now, and we always will be.”

The Doctor nodded, and he closed his eyes as he leaned into her touch. He rested his forehead against hers and basked in the rose gold light in his mind, as he projected to her all of the love and comfort he could.

Her breath hitched and she moved her hands from his cheeks to rest at the nape of his neck. She tilted her head and caught his lips in a gentle kiss. He sighed softly at the pleasure swelling through him, and he angled his head to slot her top lip between his.

Their mouths moved slowly against each other’s, tasting and exploring and reconnecting. Her lips were restless, pulling, releasing, catching, and sucking as she recommitted the feel of his mouth against hers and his hands on her body to memory. It had been far too long since she had kissed her husband.

 _Bedroom?_  she prompted, groaning as his teeth scraped oh-so lightly against her bottom lip.

He fervently agreed, even though he continued to kiss her. His nose poked at her cheek as he deepened the kiss, and his breaths were coming in heavy pants through his nose. She relaxed into him, pressing her body against his, as she moved her hands into his hair. It was just as soft as she remembered, and she delighted in feeling it slip through her fingers as she scraped her nails across his scalp.

He moaned into her mouth, and his hands dropped from her shoulders to her hips, using the leverage to pull her impossibly closer. Frantic need swelled up inside them, as the kiss grew sloppy in their growing need.

His belly swooped deliciously as their arousal pulsed in both directions across their bond, and he didn’t know if he could stop kissing her for long enough to get them to their bedroom. It felt too bloody good to kiss and be kissed as he was.

But with a herculean effort, the Doctor managed to break the kiss long enough to take Rose by the hand and guide her into the bedroom, where he showed her exactly how loved she was, how grateful he was to have her home, and how she would never be alone again.

oOoOo

As the sweat cooled on their skin and their hearts raced in their chest, the Doctor opened his arms for Rose. He held her close as she nuzzled into his chest. Their minds were blissfully drowsy, and the Doctor delighted that Rose’s mind wasn’t projecting any more pain.

They lay together quietly, but after a few minutes, the Doctor’s earlier curiosity came back as he wondered how Rose had managed to come home.

“Have you ever heard of a species called the Inani?” Rose asked quietly, feeling his inquiry.

The Doctor wracked his brain, flying through every alien race he had ever encountered, but he came up blank.

“No,” he admitted.

“They’re a trans-dimensional species,” Rose explained. “They can cross between universes at will.”

“But that’s impossible,” the Doctor argued.

Rose snorted, then she tilted her head up to level him with a look.

“Obviously not, seeing as I’m here,” she said dryly.

The Doctor winced. “Ah. Yes. Well.”

Rose smirked and returned her head to his chest as she continued her story.

“Anyways, we came across these creatures at Torchwood—”

“Why were you at Torchwood?” he blurted out, unable to stop the hatred and anger from boiling up inside of him. Torchwood was the reason Rose had been taken away from him, and the reason she had had to endure years with the pain of a broken bond.

“Are you gonna let me tell you my story or not?” she asked impatiently.

He brushed an apologetic touch across the bond and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Of course,” he answered. “Sorry, love. I just want to know everything.”

“You will, if you let me talk,” she rebuked gently. “Anyways. To answer your question, I started working for Torchwood after about six months, when it was clear you weren’t coming to get me.”

“I wouldn’t have known!” he protested. “I couldn’t’ve!”

“I know,” she soothed. “I know, Doctor. I’m not blaming you. So anyways, after about six months, I started working for Torchwood. Dad had rebuilt it into something good and respectable. Kind of reminded me of UNIT, in a way. We tried to help defend the world when it needed defending, but we also tried to help the aliens that just wanted to find their way home again.

“In all my time at Torchwood, I worked on a side project,” she continued. “We were researching the dimension hoppers, looking at how they worked, and seeing if we could get them to work again. But of course, they never did. The Void had sealed itself. But we never gave up. And one day, we ran across the Inani. They’re a telepathic species, and they could tell immediately that I was dealing with a broken telepathic bond, and that my bondmate was in a different universe than me.

“They stepped in to help right away,” Rose said, and the Doctor could feel her awe and her gratitude towards the aliens that had helped bring her home. “They told me that our technology would never work. But they could take me with them and get me back to my proper universe.”

“And you believed them?” the Doctor spluttered. “They could have been lying! They could have taken you anywhere! They could have killed you! Rose, that was incredibly dangerous of you!”

“I know, that’s what I thought, too,” Rose said, rubbing her hand soothingly through his chest hair. “But they insisted they meant no harm, or deceit. But they still knew I didn’t trust them, so they did the one thing that they thought might convince me. They came across to this universe, and they found you, and they brought back a message for me.”

Rose rolled away from him, and she leaned over the side of the bed to root through something on the floor. She found what she was looking for, and she sat up and leaned back against the headboard. The Doctor followed suit, letting the sheets drape around their hips as he scooted closer to see what Rose wanted to show him. It was just a piece of paper.

_Rose, my love,_

_The Inani are utterly brilliant! They’ll bring you home, safe and sound. Be brave, my Rose, and I’ll see you soon._

_Love always,_

_Your Doctor_

_P.S. – Use the attached TARDIS key to help the Inani get you back to the proper universe. It should also help them lock in on the TARDIS’s position._

When he’d finished reading, Rose flipped over the page and the Doctor saw that the same message had also been inscribed in Circular Gallifreyan.

“Once I saw this, and saw the TARDIS key, I knew they could bring me home,” Rose said, her voice thick with tears. “I said goodbye to Mum, Dad, and Mickey, and I went with them that night. They had their own Void ship, Doctor. Like the sphere the Daleks were hiding in. But it looked like a proper space ship, with seats and controls and everything. So I followed them into their ship, and my memories are sort of hazy after that.”

“No one is meant to travel the Void,” the Doctor said. Then he paused, reconsidering. “Well, except the races that do.  _Humans_  aren’t meant to travel the Void. It’s an endless space of nothingness. You could have been travelling with them for minutes or for millennia, and you wouldn’t even have notice the time passing, or have had any understanding of the concept of time.”

“Yeah, well, whatever happened, I eventually woke up,” Rose said. “And true to their word, they’d brought me home, and to the front doors of the TARDIS. I didn’t even thank them. I was too happy to be home that I ran into the TARDIS. But the Inani didn’t realize it wasn’t the right TARDIS. I burst into the front doors and came face to face with myself.”

The Doctor chuckled as Rose shared the memory with him. But before he could see the way the rest of the moment played out, Rose closed down the memory.

“Spoilers,” she said, patting his chest. “I can’t give away one of your regenerations.”

“Not even a little hint?” he asked, pouting.

Rose hummed and said, “Well, I suppose… It’s three bodies from now.”

“Three?” he spluttered. “But… but I only have two left!”

“Spoilers,” she said with a grin. “Suffice it to say we get a very long forever together, Doctor.”

Once the initial shock wore off, the Doctor found he couldn’t be anything other than elated. He didn’t care how it happened, but he was grateful that he could stay with Rose, and keep her, forever.

“Tell me this,” he said gravely. “Am I still fit?”

Rose bit down on her bottom lip as she remembered the beautiful blonde her husband would eventually regenerate into.

“Yeah, you are,” she whispered. “But I’ll always think you’re fit. No matter what sort of body you regenerate into.”

He hummed happily and turned to press his lips to Rose’s forehead.

“So that’s it, really,” Rose said with a shrug. “I asked you to take me back to Canary Wharf just a few seconds after the Void closed.”

“Why?”

Rose looked up at him with a soft expression.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rose asked. She reached up and carded her fingers through his hair. “I know the pain of being without you. I refused to let you go through that any longer than necessary.”

A lump swelled in the Doctor’s throat as he was filled with so much love and awe for his wife. He leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips as his happiness and love thrummed across their bond. She sighed against his lips, and he echoed it as he felt the stirrings of renewed arousal.

He settled back against their pillows as Rose turned to straddle his thighs. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her close as they once more lost themselves in the pleasure and joy of being together.


End file.
